Pronoun Goals With Phrasal Verbs

Halliday (1994: 209):

Transitive And Ergative Analyses Of Material Clauses

Halliday (1994: 171):

Medium

Halliday (1994: 163-4):

Range vs Goal

  Halliday (1994: 148):

Actor vs Goal

 Halliday (1994: 111):

Dispositive vs Creative Material Processes

Halliday (1994: 111):

Blogger Comments:

In later editions of IFG, the term 'dispositive' is replaced by the term 'transformative'.

Material Processes

 Halliday (1994: 110):

The Meaning Of 'Transitivity'

Halliday (1994: 109-10):

Actor And Goal

Halliday (1994: 109):

Metaphorical Correspondence Represented As Box Diagram

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 289, 290):

… the metaphorical example Ali gave Frazier a punch can be diagrammed as in Figure 6-18. Note that the metaphorical function of a punch is modelled not on that of Goal but on that of Range — in traditional terms, it is a "cognate object" rather than a "direct object".

Summary: Degree Of Participanthood: Goal vs Range

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 171-2):

We have summarised the features of two participant roles, Goal and Range, which vary considerably in their degree of participanthood, lying as it were at the two ends of this continuum. We saw earlier that the Medium is the element that is most closely bonded to the Process, the two together forming the nucleus of the figure. Thus the highest degree of participanthood is that of whichever element, in each particular type of figure, is conflated with the generalised function of Medium; in the case of a figure of doing, this is the Goal, the element that is impacted (moved, changed, created or destroyed) by the Process.

At the other end of the cline are those elements whose status as participant is highly precarious, those which conflate with the generalised function of Range. These, as we have seen, are closely agnate to other types of figure, either those consisting of Process alone or those with Process + circumstantial element. 

We can thus extend the continuum further, outside the status of participant altogether, into the realm of circumstances. In the next subsection we discuss the circumstantial roles; and we can order these also in terms of their degree of involvement in the process.

Degree Of Participanthood: Impacting And Degree of Individuation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 167-8):

Representatives of a class can be impacted (regardless of whether they are specific or non-specific at the point in the discourse at which they occur); but it is harder to impact the general class itself. Consequently, if the Goal is a general class rather than a set of specifiable representatives, it has a lower degree of participanthood. This appears iconically in the grammar in the limiting case of a clause where the Goal is simply that class of phenomenon that can serve as Goal of that particular type of figure: the grammar allows us to select 'goal-intransitive', which means that the Goal is simply not specified — for example:¹³

he drinks heavily [alcohol]

he eats all the time [food]

they've gone to the hills to hunt [game]

he buys and sells [any commodity]

Such examples are typically either habitual (the process unfolds repeatedly) or durational (the process unfolds over time): this generalisation across time correlates with the generalisation across potential participants — both are ways of generalising from experience. In some special cases the generalisation of the Goal across a class of entities is shown by treating it as a mass, dispensing with the plural marker:

They often shoot duck during the winter months.

Such a Goal may even be incorporated into the Process, as in he is baby-sitting (and even who's baby-sitting me this evening?)', this is a restricted option with figures realised as ranking clauses, but not uncommon where the figure is used to qualify an element and is realised by a pre-modifying clause, e.g. a fun-loving colleague, a wood-burning stove.

 

¹³ Here, because of its generality, the Goal is predictable experientially. The Goal may of course be predictable textually, which is the reverse case: so specific at that point in the discourse that it can be anaphoricaliy presumed. Typically in such cases an explicit pronoun is used to refer back; but it can be omitted in certain registers, especially instructional ones such as recipes: when all the pancakes are made, garnish the dish and serve _ with cheese and egg sauce.

Degree Of Participanthood: Degree Of Individuation

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 167):

(i) Prepare the sauce according to your favourite recipe 

(ii) Fry the aubergines for 5-10 minutes

Skin the tomatoes

Heat the ollve oil

Boil the eggs hard

Beat all the items together

Shape the lentil puree into cakes

There is a further contrast between Goal and Range in the degree of individuation that is typical of each. In the examples above, what is impacted is a specific representative of a class, or specific set of representatives; and this is typical of the degree of individuation of the Goal. Compare in this respect the contrast between move the piano, where the piano is Goal, and play the piano, where the piano is Range:

move the piano Process + Goal: specific representative of class

play the piano Process + Range: general class of instrument

Blogger Comments:

This assumes that the reference item the in play the piano is homophoric, but importantly, it can also be exophoric to the environment of the text, or endophoric to the text itself. In both these latter cases, the piano may be a specific representative of the class, like a Goal.

Degree Of Participanthood: Impacting

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 167):

As we have seen, the Goal in the particularistic model corresponds to the Medium in the generalised model wherever the figure is one of doing to or doing with. The Goal is impacted in some way by its participation in the Process; the "impact" either (i) brings a participant into existence or else (ii) manipulates one that already exists.

(i) Prepare the sauce according to your favourite recipe 

(ii) Fry the aubergines for 5-10 minutes

Skin the tomatoes

Heat the ollve oil

Boil the eggs hard

Beat all the items together

Shape the lentil puree into cakes

If the Goal is something that already exists, the result of the Process is to bring about some change — in its location, make-up, temperature, shape, &c.; and the result may be construed as a separate element, with the function Attribute (hard) or Rôle (into cakes).

These examples highlight the participant status of the Goal, showing the senses in which the Goal can be said to be impacted. There is no such impacting in the case of the Range.

Figures Of Doing: Underlying Schema

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 152-3, 152n):

The 'doing' figure is based prototypically on a schema we might refer to as "action and impact". There is always an Actor, the participant that performs the Process; and in an example such as the boys were jumping, the Process stops there — that is all there is to it. But in examples such as the boys were throwing stones, or the stones hit the wall the Actor's performance of the Process extends beyond, so as to 'impact' on another participant — this is the one known as the Goal (see Figure 4-8). 

In the typical case (the "active voice", in grammatical terminology), the clause unfolds iconically, reflecting the movement of the impact from Actor to Goal.⁶ And, as we saw above, the latter may then be followed by representation of the outcome of the impact — a resultative Attribute (he knocked it flat), a circumstance of Role (he cut it into cubes), or a circumstance of Location (he threw it into the corner).

⁶ This iconicity is, however, easily overridden by the textual metafunction, which has its own mode of iconic realisation.

Figures Of Doing: Semantic Characterisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 151):

Here there is one participant, the Actor, that performs the process in question; and this process may then impact upon another participant, the Goal (or may result in bringing the Goal into (material) existence). Other participants that may be present are the Beneficiary, the one that derives "benefit" from the process; and the Scope, the one that defines the domain over which the process extends.

Blogger Comments:

Strictly speaking, 'Beneficiary' is a participant of the generalised model. Its counterparts in the particularistic model, for doing figures, are Client and Recipient.

Why Pronominal Goals Usually Occur Within Phrasal Verbs

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 417):

This also explains something that is often presented as an arbitrary rule of English, but is in fact anything but arbitrary: that if the Goal is a pronoun it almost always occurs within the phrasal verb (they called it off rather than they called off it). This is part of the same story; a pronoun is hardly ever newsworthy, since it refers to something that has gone before, so if the Goal is a pronoun it is virtually certain that the Process will be under focus. (But not quite; the pronoun may be contrastive, and if so it can come finally, e.g. they rang up me, but apparently nobody else.)

Initiator + Actor vs Actor + Goal

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 351-2):

Putting the two analyses together, we would expect to find that these two types of clause are not identical, but that there is no clear line between them; and that is precisely the case. One difference is whether or not there can be an analytic causative with make: we can say the police made the bomb explode, but not the lion made the tourist chase. But this leaves many uncertain: what about Mary made the boat sail, the nail made the cloth tear? — and, with a different verb, the lion made the tourist run? The distinction becomes somewhat clearer if we ask whether, if the second participant is removed, the rôle of the first participant changes. In the sergeant marched the prisoners/the sergeant marched, it clearly does; it is now the sergeant who is doing the marching (cf. the police exploded, which we now have to interpret in a transferred sense) – whereas in the lion chased no such interpretation is possible. Those where the rôle changes will have Initiator + Actor rather than Actor + Goal.

Voice: Transitive Pattern

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 349):

In a transitive pattern the participants are obligatory Actor and optional Goal; if there is Actor only, the verb is intransitive and active in voice, while if both are present the verb is transitive and may be either active or passive. This is still the basis of the English system; but there is little trace of transitivity left in the verb, and voice is now more a feature of the clause.

The Medium [Definition]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 341, 343):

Every process has associated with it one participant that is the key figure in that process; this is the one through which the process is actualised, and without which there would be no process at all.  Let us call this element the Medium, since it is the entity through the medium of which the process comes into existence. … in a material process the Medium is equivalent to the Actor in an intransitive clause and Goal in a transitive clause. …

Thus the Medium is the nodal participant throughout the system. It is not the doer, nor the causer, but the one that is critically involved, in some way or other according to the particular nature of the process.